This multivolume set is much more than a collection of essays on sports and sporting cultures from around the world: it also details how and why sports are played wherever they exist, and examines key charismatic athletes from around the world who have transcended their sports. Sports Around the World: History, Culture, and Practice provides a unique, global overview of sports and sports cultures. Unlike most works of this type, this book provides both essays that examine general topics, such as globalization and sport, international relations and sport, and tourism and sport, as well as essays on sports history, culture, and practice in world regions—for example, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Oceania—in order to provide a more global perspective. These essays are followed by entries on specific sports, world athletes, stadiums and arenas, famous games and matches, and major controversies. Spanning topics as varied as modern professional cycling to the fictional movie Rocky to the deadly ball game of the ancient Mayans, the first three volumes contain overview essays and entries for specific sports that have been and are currently practiced around the world. The fourth volume provides a compendium of information on the winners of major sporting competitions from around the world. Readers will gain invaluable insights into how sports have been enjoyed throughout all of human culture, and more fully comprehend their cultural contexts. The entries provide suggestions for further reading on each topic—helpful to general readers, students with school projects, university students and academics alike. Additionally, the four-volume Sports Around the World spotlights key charismatic athletes who have changed a sport or become more than just an outstanding player.

Now available in paperback, the Encyclopedia of International Sports Studies is the most authoritative and comprehensive single-volume reference work ever published on sport. With over one million words of text arranged into more than 1000 entries and articles, it covers the full range of sub-disciplines within sports studies; including scientific, social scientific and medical approaches. The encyclopedia is alphabetically organized and consists of: principal articles covering key disciplinary areas, such as sports economics and sports history large topical entries on central subjects such as resistance training and the diagnosis of sports injuries smaller topical entries on subjects such as cross training and projectile motion short overviews of other important terms and concepts, from metabolism and motivation to muscle tension-length relationship. With over 150 contributing authors from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Japan, New Zealand, Hong Kong and continental Europe, the Encyclopedia of International Sports Studies is an unparalleled work of sports scholarship. Accessibly written, facts-fronted and including full cross-referencing and guides to further reading throughout, this is an essential addition to the bookshelf of any student, researcher, teacher or professional working in sport.

The sports of Europe and the United States were imitated and assimilated and became symbols of national and cosmopolitan identity. This work examines the national and international importance of sport and its role in shaping post-millennium global culture.

This book explores, analyses, and explains divergent ideologies and practices of gymnastics in selected European nations. It reconstructs the ex- and import processes from Europe to America and determines the processes, interrelationships and transformations of these "transatlantic movements" in their new home country. The book offers a more complete understanding of the role of gymnastics and expressive movements in cultural and ideological transmission over time and identifies the impact of these concepts on American physical education, sports systems and sports cultures. The main focus of the book lies in the two decades before and after World War I. This concentration on a specific historical epoch allows us to identify parallel, but also different developments of the various forms of gymnastics and of the transfer and implementation processes. The volume covers the transfer and impact of German Turnen, Czech Sokol and the Delsarte system in North America. In addition, it traces the influences of French gymnastics in South America and describes the tours of the world-renowned Danish gymnastic reformer Nils Bukh in both Americas. A focus will be the "import" of gymnastics, but also on the adaption processes of these different concepts and their integration into the American culture. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

This handbook illustrates the utility of global sport as a lens through which to disentangle the interconnected political, economic, cultural, and social patterns that shape our lives. Drawing on multidisciplinary perspectives, it is organized into three parts. The first part outlines theoretical and conceptual insights from global sport scholarship: from the conceptualization and development of globalization theories, transnationalism and transnational capital, through to mediasport, roving coloniality, and neoliberal doctrine. The second part illustrates the varied flows within global sport and the ways in which these flows are contested, across physical cultures/sport forms, identities, ideologies, media, and economic capital. Diverse topics and cases are covered, such as sport business and the global sport industry, financial fair play, and global mediasport. Finally, the third part explores various aspects of global sport development and governance, incorporating insights from work in the Global South. Across all of these contributions, varied approaches are taken to examine the ‘power of sport’ trope, generating a thought-provoking dialogue for the reader. Featuring an accomplished roster of contributors and wide-ranging coverage of key issues and debates, this handbook will serve as an indispensable resource for scholars and students of contemporary sports studies.

This book provides a concise and comprehensive review of major developments in sport and physical activity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as viewed from an international perspective. Some of the world's leading experts in sports history identify and analyze the major global issues and concerns confronting sport and physical education today. Unlike books that try to cover the entire history of sport from early societies to the present, this book focuses on the specific events, developments and programs that have shaped sport as we know it today. For anyone interested in the history of sport.

In this impressive book, Barbara Keys offers the first major study of the political and cultural ramifications of international sports competitions in the decades before World War II. Focusing on the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, she examines the transformation of events like the Olympic Games and the World Cup from relatively small-scale events to the expensive, political, globally popular extravaganzas familiar to us today.